World's End

Page 104

135

JOAND. VINGE

We rise up and up on the erratic currents of heated air.

Fire Lake reaches as far as I can see. Its surface shifts and flows like the face of the sun, now in sharp detail, now soft and amorphous. I rub my eyes.

As the shore disappears into the heat-haze behind us, I see something born out of the shimmering play of light ahead. A monolith of red stone rises from the center of the Lake. As we draw near it, I see water falling from its heights, plumes of liquid transfiguring into clouds as

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they meet the Lake's surface far below. My parched throat aches at the sight of it. I ask someone for a drink.

The outlaws ignore me. The rover circles like a carrion bird high in the air, then spirals downward toward a landing.

There are buildings below, I realize at last. They are almost invisible, because they have been gouged and piled up out of the red stone itself. And then jumbled.

Jagged boulders, fissures and irregularities, are fused randomly into building walls, layered between levels of mortared stone, transforming an unnatural intrusion into an artless act of chaos. They are ruins--but like no ruins I have ever known. Cleaving their heart is a twisting cross of deep canyons. Where the canyons meet is a fountainhead. Water rises out of a hidden wellspring, flows over the rock face and falls from its precipice into fire, only to rise again--

We land easily on a flat slab of stone near the canyon's edge. There are other flyers and rovers there already-- I feel surprise when I see so many. I wonder dimly how many still belong to their original owners.

I look over the canyon's edge as we leave the rover.

The water far below is as clear as crystal, and in its

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depths I see the red rock stained with cool, mossy greens.

Where the canyons cross, something silvery catches the sun. The water undulates sinuously as it flows, and at first I can't think why it looks so strange. Then I realize 136

WORLD S END